Norwell, Hull schools say move to iPads a success

Hundreds of students in Norwell and Hull will trade in their paper notebooks, planners and textbooks for iPads this fall after what administrators in both towns saw as a successful test run with take-home tablet computers last year. Several other South Shore school districts are considering similar programs.

By Neal Simpson

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Neal Simpson

Posted Aug. 20, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Aug 20, 2013 at 8:08 PM

By Neal Simpson

Posted Aug. 20, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Aug 20, 2013 at 8:08 PM

NORWELL

» Social News

In the past, when her son struggled with his math homework at night, Jennifer Burke was often at a loss to help him understand his notes from class.

But that changed last fall, when Christopher Burke came home from Norwell Middle School with a school-issued iPad, loaded with a copy of the teacher’s notes from the day’s lesson.

“It helped a lot,” Jennifer Burke, a member of the Norwell PTO, said. “He had the most rewarding experience with math in his life.”

Hundreds of students in Norwell and Hull will trade in their paper notebooks, planners and textbooks for iPads this fall after what administrators in both towns saw as a successful test run with take-home tablet computers last year.

Several other South Shore school districts are considering similar programs, which are increasingly seen as a way to engage students in their own digital world while giving teachers new tools to present their curriculum and adapt lessons to student needs.

“What we found is this technology really is a tool – it’s not the curriculum, it’s not the instruction,” said Norwell Superintendent Matthew Keegan, who is expanding the district’s iPad program to freshmen, sophomores and juniors this fall after launching it with middle school students last year.

Despite their growing popularity, take-home computer programs are still uncommon in Massachusetts schools. A survey of 221 districts conducted by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in March found that 14 percent had a one-to-one initiative in place, while 37 percent planned to introduce one in the near future.

On the South Shore, districts in Abington, Carver, Duxbury, Milton, Scituate and Stoughton said they are preparing to implement a take-home computer program sometime in the next five years. Most said they planned to roll it out in the next two to three years.

Fueling interest in the programs are studies, including one conducted by Boston College in the Berkshires in 2008 and 2009, that have found that similar programs using laptop computers can increase student engagement, improve the length and quality of student writing, and even raise standardized test scores in some subjects. Few studies, however, have been conducted involving computer tablets like the iPad, which first hit the market in April 2010.

Kyle Shachmut, an associate technology consultant in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, said iPads offer some advantages over laptops, including a lower price and greater mobility. “I think there’s a lot of anecdotal promise, as long as there’s appropriate teacher training and there’s support in place and it’s not just throwing a bunch of iPads in a pile in the classroom,” he said.

Administrators in Hull and Norwell say the devices, which cost about $379 apiece with an educational discount, have changed many parts of the school day, from the way students take notes and complete group assignments to the way teachers present lessons and pass out homework.

Page 2 of 2 - In Norwell, students walking into their class often use their iPad to scan a QR code – similar to a bar code – and will have the lesson of the day in their hands by the time they get to their seat. During lessons, teachers will ask students to complete a problem on their iPads and submit their answers to a program that automatically scores them and lets the teacher know whether they need to spend more time on a lesson before moving on.

Administrators say the devices have had a surprising effect on some students. At Hull’s Memorial Middle School, Principal Anthony Hrivnak said he’s noticed that many students who had struggled with writing started turning in longer essays once they could tap them out on their iPads.

“Students who wouldn’t write more than a couple of words were writing sentences,” he said. “It showed that the iPad is almost like an equalizer.”

Norwell was also able to eliminate take-home textbooks for English and math last year, replacing them with a digital textbook and a classroom copy. The district plans to add a digital social studies text this year. Digital handouts have eliminated reams of photocopied pages that would otherwise be stuffed into binders and backpacks.

“For the majority of kids, what they’re carrying now from classroom to classroom is drastically reduced,” said Warren MacCallum, director of finance and operations for the Norwell schools.

Hull and Norwell took different approaches in setting up rules for the iPads, but administrators in both towns said they’ve had few problems with discipline related to the machines. In Hull, students are free to download music and games onto their school-issued iPad, while rules in Norwell forbid students from loading any games onto the device without permission from a school administrator.

Hrivnak, the Hull middle school principal, said the threat of losing iPad privileges has been a powerful deterrent to bad behavior, as has the knowledge that school staff can look at the contents of a student’s iPad at any time.

“When you’re firm, fair and consistent, the kids know,” he said. “It only took one or two students losing their iPad for a week, and they knew we were serious.”